With visa-issuing operations at the U.S. Embassy in Havana at a virtual standstill, the United States is expected to fall far short of the minimum of 20,000 annual immigrant visas for Cubans that is the target in the U.S.-Cuba migration accords.

A semiannual report that the State Department is required to submit to Congress shows that through the end of July, only 3,195 visas were issued, making it highly unlikely when final visa numbers are tallied for the last two months of the fiscal year that the United States will come anywhere near the 20,000-visa target for Cuban migrants who don’t have immediate family members in the United States.

Meanwhile, from the beginning of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, 2017 through Aug. 3, U.S. consular officers issued just 134 family reunification documents, even though the United States had more than 20,000 applications pending. The report said that the State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services were considering options so that the family reunification program could continue.

Since the beginning of the fiscal year, the United States also has neither accepted nor processed applications for Cubans seeking refugee status in the United States, according to the report.

About two-thirds of the diplomats at the embassy were withdrawn last year after about two dozen U.S. personnel fell ill to a mysterious constellation of symptoms of unknown origin. While the United States hasn’t directly blamed Cuba for the incidents, it says it does hold Havana responsible for not ensuring the safety of American diplomats while they were in Cuban territory.

After the downsizing, the United States switched all but emergency visa-issuing operations to its embassy in Bogotá and then to the embassy in Georgetown, Guyana. Cubans who want visas to visit the United States also must apply for their documents at U.S. consular offices outside Cuba.

The U.S. Embassy in Georgetown, Guyana, began conducting interviews for Cubans seeking U.S. immigrant visas in early June. 2018.

Doreen Hemlock Special to the Miami Herald

“Almost all visa processing in Havana has been suspended,” said the State Department report, and immigrant visa-processing for Cubans at the latter two embassies is being handled at a “much reduced capacity.” Many Cubans also can’t afford to make expensive trips to Guyana and Colombia to apply for migrant visas, especially since they have no assurance such visas will be granted.

Cuban migration to the United States has been greatly reduced across the board since the embassy draw-down and since the United States ended a preferential policy for Cuban migrants in January 2017. Previously, under the “wet foot, dry foot” policy, Cubans who arrived at U.S. borders without visas were given automatic entry into the United States and allowed to stay and get permanent residency and green cards after they had been in the United States a year and a day.

Now Cubans who attempt to enter the United States illegally and who don’t qualify for humanitarian relief are subject to removal, putting them on equal footing with potential immigrants from other countries.

Especially dramatic since the policy change is the reduction in the number of Cubans interdicted by the Coast Guard as they try to make their way to the United States by sea.

In fiscal year 2016, there were 5,651 Cubans interdicted at sea. That fell to 1,606 in 2017. And through Aug. 14 of this fiscal year, 200 Cubans were picked up at sea. If they have a credible fear of persecution if they return home, they are generally taken to the U.S. Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay for processing. Otherwise, under the migration accords, they are returned to Cuba.

A rustic vessel made by Cuban migrants is docked behind Key Largo Ocean Resort in Key Largo. It arrived during a spike in migration from Cuba. Now that has slowed.

Photo by Eduardo Barandiaran

The U.S. Coast Guard and the Cuban Border Guard routinely cooperate in maritime migration matters, including “active target hand-off operations” in which the Cubans pursue a vessel until it leaves Cuban territorial waters, allowing the Coast Guard to interdict the vessel, according to the report.

Cuba patrols its coast to prevent illegal people smuggling operations and has reported 27 cases of illegal migration so far this fiscal year, according to the report.

The number of Cubans trying to make their way to the United States by traveling through Latin America to the U.S. border with Mexico also has fallen sharply this fiscal year. During fiscal 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection had 15,557 encounters with Cubans along the southwest U.S. border. Through Aug. 21 of this fiscal year, the number was 5,465 encounters along the southwest border.

Cuba also has obligations under the migration accords, which were implemented to try to insure safe, legal and orderly migration between the two countries. Although Cuba no longer requires Cuban citizens to get exit visas before they leave the country, the report said some medical personnel “have reported challenges” when they ask to leave and there also have been “credible reports of dissidents being denied permission to travel.”

Slowly both countries have worked to chip away at a list of 2,746 Cubans who left the island during the 1980 Mariel boatlift and were later deemed ineligible to remain in the United States for various reasons such as a prior criminal record in Cuba or because they had committed a crime in the United States.

Since 1984, 2,034 Cubans from this list have been returned to the island and 254 have died. Through August, a total of five Cubans on the list were repatriated in fiscal 2018.

There is also a backlog of around 37,000 other Cubans who are subject to final orders of removal, according to the report. Many of those on that list are convicted felons who have served their time for crimes committed in the United States but couldn’t be returned to Cuba before the U.S. and Cuba reestablished diplomatic relations in 2015. In recent years, according to the report, the U.S. has submitted 2,000 cases to Cuba of those who it would like to return to the island. In an historic first, Cuba agreed to the repatriation of 10 Cubans on this list in December 2017.

Under a 2017 joint statement signed by the United States and Cuba, all Cubans who left the island after Jan. 12, 2017, and tried to enter or remain in the United States illegally also are subject to being sent back to Cuba. But Cuba has interpreted this non-binding guideline differently from the United States, saying it doesn’t have to accept individuals who left the island before Jan. 12, 2017 but then didn’t try to illegally remain in or enter the United States until after that date.

As of Aug. 8, the report said, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had proposed 687 Cubans it wanted to repatriate under the guidelines of the 2017 joint statement, but Cuba has denied entry for 362 of them due to its different interpretation. “The Department of State and ICE are attempting to resolve this difference in interpretation,” the report said.

The last time the United States and Cuba met to review migration trends and how the migration accords were working was in July in Washington. The two sides expect to hold the next round of migration talks in late 2018.

We have assumed that
the inability to do visas in Cuba was the unintended consequence of the dumb
policy to gut the embassy (i.e. reward whomever was responsible for the
mysterious maladies affecting US. diplomats/intelligence operatives).

However, given the
xenophobia that characterizes the Trump Administration, the drastic reduction
of migration from Cuba is no doubt a welcome side effect if not the motivation.

Sunday, October 14, 2018

There are many exciting Cuba related programs taking
place in New York in October and November. If they fit your schedule, these
are all worthwhile. Migration and
RemittancesRacial Inequality in Cuba

Monday,
October 15, 4-6 PMSegal TheatreThe Graduate Center,
CUNYThe Cuban Revolution of 1959 sought to sharply reduce various
forms of social inequality. However, today's Cuban society finds itself marked
by rising levels of poverty and inequality, growing unemployment, dwindling
social services and continuous outward migration. Moreover, in the context of a
changing economy, defined by the declining role of the state and the
introduction of market mechanisms, new social stratifications are emerging - and
doing so along clearly visible, racial lines. Inequality and race, both dominant
themes in pre-revolutionary Cuba and ones that the Revolution fought hard to
eliminate, have once again become key, overlapping issues.

This panel
will discuss the results of a two year long, German Research Council (DFG)
funded, research project, including a unique, island-wide survey, which examined
the role and impact of migration, remittances and citizenship, within the
context of the island’s recent economic reforms, on Cuba’s growing racial
inequalities.

Katrin Hansing (Ph.D., University of Oxford) is
Associate Professor of Anthropology at Baruch College, CUNY and Senior Research
Fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA). Hansing has
spent the past twenty years conducting research on issues of ‘race,’ inequality,
migration, transnational ties and youth in Cuba and its diaspora. Her latest
publications include: "Race and Inequality in the New Cuba: Reasons, Dynamics,
and Manifestations" (Social Research: An International Quarterly, 2017), and
"Race and Rising Inequality in Cuba" (Current History, 2018).Bert
Hoffmann(Ph.D., Freie Universität Berlin) is Senior
Researcher at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and Head of
the GIGA Berlin Office. He is also Professor of Political Science at the Freie
Universität Berlin. His latest publications include: Emigrant Policies in Latin
America and the Caribbean (FLASCO Chile 2016) with Luicy Pedroza and Pau Palop;
and "Bureaucratic socialism in reform mode: the changing politics of Cuba’s
post-Fidel era" (Third World Quarterly, 2016). Odette
Casamayor-Cisneros(Ph.D., School of Advanced Studies in
Social Sciences, Paris) is Associate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean
Cultural Studies at University of Connecticut. Some of her areas of expertise
include Afro-diaspora and Blackness in the Americas. Her first book of essays,
Utopia, distopía e ingravidez...(Iberoamericana-Vervuert,2013) examines the
existential void experienced by Cubans after the collapse of the Socialist Bloc
in the 1990s. Casamayor is currently writing a new book, On Being Blacks:
Challenging the Hegemonic Knowledge Through Racial Self-Identification Processes
in Contemporary Cuban Cultural Production.

Carlos Garcia Pleyan Cuban sociologist / urban planner Carlos Garcia Pleyan is visiting
NYC from Oct. 1 to Oct. 28 invited by Pratt Institute's Graduate Center for
Planning and the Environment. I was able to hear him last Thursday at the
Bildner Center and was very impressed. The following information was provided
by his host, Dr. Jill Hamberg.Carlos is giving
four talks open to the public on a variety of topics: the future of Havana,
Cuba's emerging real estate market, and participation / decentralization.

Please note that RSVPs are required for two of the events. Two talks
will only be in Spanish and the others in Spanish with English interpretation.
The PowerPoint slides will be in English for all talks.

Carlos Garcia Pleyan
has worked for 30 years as a staff member and researcher in the field of urban
planning and land management in the national office of the Institute of Physical
Planning (IPF) and the National Institute of Economic Research (INIE), as well
as in various Cuban NGOs (MEPLA and Habitat-Cuba). He was an associate
researcher at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (Switzerland). Garcia
Pleyan has published numerous articles in books and magazines and given lectures
on regional, urban and community development in universities in Cuba, Europe and
Latin America. From 2002 to 2011 he coordinated the local development program of
the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in Cuba (COSUDE). He has been a
professor at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and Polytechnic University
of Catalonia (UPC), as well as the Jose Antonio Echeverria Technological
University of Havana. He is currently a consultant to COSUDE and the Master Plan
department of the Office of the City Historian of Havana.

‘DEPARTURES’ ~ A PLAY BY EL CIERVO ENCANTADOSunday,
November 4, 2018 at 5 pm

El Ciervo Encantado, a Havana-based
theatrical group, returns to New York City for a reprise of
Departures, which premiered last year at The Greene Space. Written
by Nelda Castillo, the group’s founder and director, Departures
grapples with the phenomenon of Cuban emigration from 1959 through the
present, and seeks communion with its audiences through personal history. Cuban
migration has fragmented families, couples, friendships and communities,
becoming a unifying element, a part of Cuban identity.

The performance
features actress Mariela Brito as Cuba’s everywoman, telling her own
story and those of the many who have departed. Surrounded by photographs of both
illustrious and unknown Cubans who left to escape hunger, censorship,
persecution and terror, she leads us through the national memory that is never
discussed, but that is, among Cubans, an almost physical presence.

Since
the suspension of almost all visa processing in Havana over a year ago, it has
been all but impossible for Cuban performers to appear in the United States,
making this a rare opportunity for New York audiences to engage with artists
from the Island. The performance will be presented in Spanish with simultaneous
English translation through earphones, followed by a Q&A with the
artists.

FÉLIX VARELA, EN EL 230 ANIVERSARIO DE SU
NATALICIOTuesday, November 20, 2018 @ 6 pmA
celebration of the life and legacy of Padre Félix Varela (1788-1853), on
the 230th anniversary of his birth. Varela was an outstanding scholar and
paramount figure in the gestation of a Cuban national identity in the first half
of the 19th century. His influence on intellectual thought and progressive ideas
in Cuba, including equal education for women, the abolition of slavery, and the
cause for the Island’s independence, cannot be overestimated. In the United
States, his work in defense of immigrants in New York City, as well as his
exemplary ministry in the service of others, earned him a lasting distinction as
a social reformer and a path toward sainthood in the Catholic Church.

The
commemorative presentation will be given by Bishop Osvaldo Cisneros, of
the Diocese of Brooklyn, at the Church of the Transfiguration, founded by
Padre Varela. Bishop Cisneros was named a Prelate of Honor by Pope John Paul II
in 1988. He presently serves as vice-postulator of the Cause for Canonization of
the Servant of God Félix Varela. He is a founding member and president of the
Félix Varela Foundation.

After a hurricane, mysterious attacks, and U.S. warnings, travelers return to Cuba

Cuba tour operators began to notice a curious thing in the dead of summer this year. Bookings to the island began to increase month over month, following a drastic slump.

“We’ve gotten back to a more normal situation over the past two to three months. Sales have really picked up,” said Collin Laverty, president of Cuban Educational Travel, which offers cultural, educational, event and luxury travel to Cuba.

The spike followed a rough patch when Cuba became a less appealing destination as Irma hit the island’s north coast in September 2017, the U.S. published confusing new regulations for travelers to the island, and the U.S. State Department issued a travel alert warning Americans to reconsider travel to Cuba in the wake of a mysterious ailment that made 26 Havana-based diplomats sick at their homes and two hotels.

The hurricane and publicity about the diplomats’ illnesses “dampened demand right at a time when travelers generally book trips for the winter season,” said Tom Popper, president of InsightCuba, which offers a wide variety of people-to-people tours to Cuba.SIGN ME UP!

“A year ago it was the never-ending story of the attacks on the diplomats,” said Laverty. Because some of the health incidents, which are still of unknown origin, occurred in a room at the Hotel Nacional and two rooms at the Hotel Capri, the U.S. State Department warned Americans against travel to Cuba, first in a travel advisory last year and then in a Level 3 travel alert that advised travelers to reconsider trips to Cuba.

In August, the alert was downgraded to Level 2, (exercise increased caution) and that has perked up Americans’ interest in visiting the island, said Laverty who has handled arrangements for hundreds of U.S. schools, colleges and universities that have academic exchange programs in Cuba.

Some schools don’t allow any student travel to a country where a travel advisory or Level 3 alert is in place, so they couldn’t offer Cuba programs this year. “Now that the travel alert has been downgraded, many of these schools are going back and reinstating their programs for March 2019,” Laverty said.

Despite the alerts, Road Scholar, which has been offering people-to-people trips to Cuba since 1997, has continued to book its groups into the Hotel Nacional, which the State Department still advises U.S. travelers to avoid along with the Capri even though the health incidents have only involved U.S. diplomatic personnel.

For James Moses, president and chief executive of Boston-based Road Scholar, Cuba remains a safe destination.

“We did our due diligence and talked to the State Department and concluded that these [health incidents] were so specific,” he said. “It’s always been specific to diplomats. The incidents weren’t generalized. Our travelers’ safety is always our top concern.”

Cuba, he said, remains one of Road Scholar’s top-tier destinations. But after enrollment in Road Scholar’s Cuba programs grew by more than 70 percent in 2015 and 2016, it has declined by around 60 percent since then.

Fallout from the travel warnings, as well as other factors, have taken a toll on overall travel to the island. During the first half of the year, the number of international visitors fell by 5.67 percent and travel from the United States, excluding visits by Cuban Americans who are counted in a separate category, was down by 23.6 percent.

Tourists ride a tour bus in front of the Capitolio in Havana in June 2017.

Ramón Espinosa AP

For the anemic Cuban economy, tourism has been one of the few bright spots. For the past few years, the government had set ambitious goals for international visitor arrivals and always surpassed them. But after a discouraging first half of the year, Cuba revised its 2018 target for international visitors from 5 million to 4.75 million, still slightly ahead of 2017 numbers.

Even though Cuba made it a priority to clean up its north coast resorts after Hurricane Irma’s swipe last September and completed repairs relatively quickly, the hurricane still took a toll on international tourism during the 2017-2018 winter season.

But starting in May, InsightCuba began to notice interest in Cuba picking up again, Popper said. “There were spikes in web traffic leads and bookings,” he said, and through the summer each month showed growth that was about 25 percent stronger than the previous one, he said.

“That trend was the opposite of what we saw the previous year, and it’s a pretty clear sign to me that the Cuba market is coming back,” said Popper. “The cruise ships are also adding departures and ports.”

Cruising is the big growth segment of the Cuban travel market. U.S.-based cruise lines plan dozens of itineraries for the 2018-2019 winter season.

“If we look at the enrollment now vs. last year at this time, the trend is definitely going up,” said Road Scholar’s Moses.

To keep the Cuba destination fresh, both Road Scholar and InSightCuba have come up with new offerings for 2019 and later this year.

InsightCuba, for example, will be partnering with record label Putumayo World Music for a music expedition in November that will feature meetings with Cuban artists and performances. Over the years Putumayo’s Cuban music collection has sold more than half a million copies. “Now Putumayo can bring people to the music,” Popper said.

“Any company in travel has to constantly renew itself and respond to changing tastes — in Cuba more so than any other destination,” he said. “Not only do tastes and preferences change but the U.S. is also constantly changing how Americans can travel to Cuba.”

Visitors dance as musicians play at a bar in Havana.

Ramon Espinosa AP

Road Scholar offers 12 different Cuban itineraries, including cruises, birding expeditions and cultural and photographic tours. New for 2019 is a cruise that combines Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands and begins with a lecture in Little Havana on the Cuban-American perspective on U.S.-Cuba relations and a People and Society tour to Havana, Cienfuegos, Trinidad and Santa Clara that includes interactions with Cuban musicians and entrepreneurs.

Tour operators said that a decrease in hotel prices also is playing a role in attracting more visitors to Cuba.

“Another good sign is that prices have gone down in Cuba. We’ll be lowering our prices to reflect that,” said Popper.

During the boom years, Cuban hotels had trouble keeping up with the demand and rates zoomed upward. During 2015 and 2016, visitors found it difficult to get reservations at Cuba’s most popular private restaurants, it was almost impossible to find a hotel room in Havana on short notice, and travelers paid top dollar for accommodations.

But Cuba’s tourism infrastructure wasn’t ready for the sudden increase in demand, and travelers didn’t like paying a ton of money for rooms they often found lacking, said Laverty.

The high prices began to dampen demand not only for Road Scholar trips but also overall travel to Cuba, said Moses. But “now we’re definitely seeing better pricing,” he said, and Road Scholar is passing those savings on to its travelers.

In 2015, the cost per day for a Road Scholar program in Cuba was $471, but by 2017, it had increased to $534. For 2019, the average price will be below 2015 levels at approximately $412 per day.

During the travel boom, rooms at the Saratoga, a Havana hotel where visiting delegations often stay, were going for more than $600 per night. Last weekend a room at the Saratoga was available on a special for $271 a night on Hotels.com. At the more affordable Four Points by Sheraton, which is managed by Marriott, the price for a room last weekend was $104.

The facade of the new Hotel Packard hotel in Havana.

courtesy Iberostar

More hotels coming on line also have begun to ease the capacity crunch. Cuba recently opened its second five-star hotel, the Grand Packard. The hotel with panoramic views of Havana’s Malecón is managed by the Spanish company Iberostar Hotels & Resorts, for Gaviota, a Cuban tourism brand that is part of the military-controlled conglomerate GAESA.

But while bookings for group tours are picking up, Cubans who rent out rooms in their homes and operate other small private businesses say they’re still hurting from a dearth of individual American travelers who often choose to stay in casas particulares (bed and breakfasts) to get a more authentic Cuban experience.

“American travelers were really helping build that part of the economy and were supporting it,” Laverty said. Many private Cuban entrepreneurs made investments in their properties and businesses with the assumption that American travel would continue to grow. “Now we’re seeing a lot of those investments without returns,” he said.

Recent travelers say private clubs and restaurants are still relatively empty and some private rooms in Centro Habana that once rented for $25 to $30 a night have reduced prices to around $15 in an effort to lure in more travelers.

One place that seems immune to the vagaries of Cuba travel cycles, however, is Miami International Airport, the main hub for U.S. travel, especially Cuban-American travel, to the island. Despite the drop in American travelers during the first half of the year, travel to and from Cuba through MIA continued to grow even as some airlines dropped their Cuba service from other U.S. airports.

Passengers at Miami International Airport await a flight to Cuba.

MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Through August, MIA was ahead of last year’s record-setting pace for flights to and from Cuba. From January to August, 550,750 Cuban-bound passengers departed from MIA, a 21 percent increase, and 549,048 passengers arrived from Cuba, 12.6 percent more than in 2017.

And if American Airlines has its way, there may be even more Cuba-bound flights leaving from MIA.

American Airlines asked the Department of Transportation at the end of September for the flexibility to shift its Charlotte-Havana flight to a Miami-Havana route without having to go through lengthy route allocation proceedings in which it would formally give up the Charlotte route and then apply for another Miami route. It also plans to begin a new Miami-Santiago de Cuba route in May.

Some of the US press contributed to the decline of tourism by reporting that independent travel had been terminated by President Trump. In fact, it was simply transferred to a new license category, "Support for the Cuban People". The only real difference is that travelers now need to stay in a privately owned casa particular (bed and breakfast) rather than in a state owned hotel. Summary information here tinyurl.com/FITCuba legal provisions here tinyurl.com/regsnov2017

Cuba could increase independent travel by licensing private guides as cuenta propistas and allowing its citizens to create small businesses in the tourism sector as foreigners already can.